Annij wrote:To begin with, race is a myth. So, without getting all researchy and endlessly giving air time to this silly question, we simply have to remember we are part of the same species, meaning when we all breed together our progeny too can breed. I think that settles it.

Nonsense! You chant a liberal mantra and claim it to be science? Wolves, coyotes, and dogs cam all breed and produce fertile offspring. You are aying that they are all the same. Turkeys, chickens, pheasants, and Pea fowl mixes can produce fertile offspring. An infant can tell significant differences between the various races. LOL! What happens to the minds of PC liberals that renders them unable to observe reality accurately? Too much chanting???

Annij wrote:To begin with, race is a myth. So, without getting all researchy and endlessly giving air time to this silly question, we simply have to remember we are part of the same species, meaning when we all breed together our progeny too can breed. I think that settles it.

Nonsense! You chant a liberal mantra and claim it to be science? Wolves, coyotes, and dogs cam all breed and produce fertile offspring. You are aying that they are all the same. Turkeys, chickens, pheasants, and Pea fowl mixes can produce fertile offspring. An infant can tell significant differences between the various races. LOL! What happens to the minds of PC liberals that renders them unable to observe reality accurately? Too much chanting???

Do you have anything besides yelling "liberal" at anyone who disagrees with you? Are you here to debate or to recite trite catch phrases you gleaned elsewhere on the Internet?

An infant can distinguish between people alright. It, for example, knows its mother from its father. It knows its fat aunt from its skinny aunt. What exactly is your point with respect to infants? In fact what is your point generally? Are you trying to imply a racial hierarchy in intelligence? If so, how do you account for all the black people that are smarter than you? In fact what about the black people that are smarter than you and anyone you know, have ever known or will ever know?

You dare to point toward "trite catch phrases"? Then you ignore completely my argument about species.

I do not believe that you are so ignorant that you do not know what an average IQ is and how Average IQs overlap. I have people in my family who have IQs lower than the average IQ of an American black, but that doesn't change the average IQ of American blacks. I, personally have a 25-30 point IQ over the average American black, but that has nothing to do with any races average IQ, and certainly, some blacks are more inteligent than I am. That does not affect any races average IQ. You cannot be so silly as to think that blacks average the same IQ as Whites, or Asians.....Or American Jews. I hope you aren't.

If all of the races had equal IQ averages the reigning PC Social Police woud have tesed us all and proven it in the 60s. Instead they seek refuge in shifting arguments about culture and environment and the unreliability of tests. The fact is that everyone is not equal, and no amount of social engineering can make them equal. Small minds crippled by the politically correct social sciences agendas have too much invested to embrace actual science, fact, and truth. My first degree was in Sociology in the 70's. I personally experienced the suppression of critical thought that created emotion based arguments like yours.

If we were all the same, this wouldn't happen.

" Yet by nine months, babies react more swiftly to their own race than others: they differentiate more readily between faces and match emotional sounds with facial expressions faster. A study from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, published in May in Developmental Science, showed that the younger infants use only the frontal part of the brain for the task. By nine months, babies also recruit the occipital-temporal region, where recognition happens in adults. "http://www.scientificamerican.com/artic ... -see-race/

What about species? How is any of that relevant? How does it support your theories?

You cannot be so silly as to think that blacks average the same IQ as Whites, or Asians.....Or American Jews. I hope you aren't.

But blacks do average higher IQ's than whites and Asians according to "work" done by such luminaries of scientific racism as Richard Lynn. I suggest you take a look at the list of IQ by nation, which I'm sure you're familiar with:

Notice all the white and Asian countries whose IQ averages fall below the IQ average of black Americans. Countries such as India, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Syria, Algeria, Pakistan, Morocco, etc., all score below black Americans. This wouldn't happen if your racial hierarchy in intelligence theories had any validity. As a matter of fact, adjusted for 400+ years of brutality and cultural ostracization black American IQ is actually significantly higher than white American IQ. So I don't know why you're pointing to the IQ average of blacks in America as proof of your pseudoscience. By every measure, black American IQ debunks your entire worldview.

If all of the races had equal IQ averages the reigning PC Social Police woud have tesed us all and proven it in the 60s.

Yeah, well I just proved that American blacks have higher IQ's than whites and Asians, even in spite of 400+ years of slavery and oppression.

Instead they seek refuge in shifting arguments about culture and environment and the unreliability of tests.

Well, the tests have often proved to be unreliable if not outright fraudulent. Let me ask you a question, how would you score on an IQ test given in the Zulu language and steeped in Zulu cultural references? Would that be a reliable test from your perspective?

The fact is that everyone is not equal, and no amount of social engineering can make them equal.

That's true on an individual level, regardless of race. And you should couch it that way rather than suggesting that entire races of people are inferior or superior.

Small minds crippled by the politically correct social sciences agendas have too much invested to embrace actual science, fact, and truth. My first degree was in Sociology in the 70's.

Well, the problem is you people never have any science. It's all scientific racism and pseudoscience. Where is your science? I dare you here and now to provide your science. Show me. In fact you have no science, so stop claiming you do.

I personally experienced the suppression of critical thought that created emotion based arguments like yours.

It's actually people like you who suppress speech. One of your pet tactics is to describe as a liberal anyone with a sensible, scientifically correct view of these matters. Or you'll claim there's a vast conspiracy driven by political correctness that keeps your laughable views from gaining currency. You're also the ones driven by emotion. Just read your posts. They're emotional rather than scientific appeals. Where's your science?

" Yet by nine months, babies react more swiftly to their own race than others: they differentiate more readily between faces and match emotional sounds with facial expressions faster. A study from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, published in May in Developmental Science, showed that the younger infants use only the frontal part of the brain for the task. By nine months, babies also recruit the occipital-temporal region, where recognition happens in adults. "http://www.scientificamerican.com/artic ... -see-race/

Babies react to familiar things. That means that a white baby raised around black people will react more swiftly to black people than to white people. My friend, look to your own IQ.

Anyone else notice that the people I'm debating never seem to come back to defend their so-called positions? That pretty much tells us all we need to know about the flimsiness of their entire ideology. An ideology that wilts under a little bit of opposition is definitely unsound to say the least.

Seth 90210: you completely missed my point: I said just look around you with an open mind. If you do you will arrive at a conclusion befitting your own IQ and past experiences. I repeat-open mind. We all descended from the same line, then changed over the Eons, into different "races" because of geographic isolation. Humans are just one example. Just look at the geographic distribution of other native animals, even virus, such as that causing AIDS. (HIV). I also alluded to the frequency distribution curve. There are even a few Whites who can play football and box, just as there are some articulate Black men, like our Pres. Read your local newspaper. Notice any racial distribution of crime? Google Hartsville toddler death for an example!!! Dr. Jim.

Egad wrote:Seth 90210: you completely missed my point: I said just look around you with an open mind. If you do you will arrive at a conclusion befitting your own IQ and past experiences.

This is complete gibberish. Also, I find it odd that you’re asking me to have an open mind when your mind is seemingly hermetically sealed. A bigot, by definition, is someone with a closed mind.

I repeat-open mind. We all descended from the same line, then changed over the Eons, into different "races" because of geographic isolation.

Yeah. So what?

Btw, it's obvious your "doctorate" is neither in anthropology nor genetics. You simply don't know what you're talking about. In terms of evolutionary time scales humans had been isolated a relatively short time. We're talking a few tens of thousands of years at most and even then there had been continuous gene flow between different populations of humans. This is certainly not enough time for discrete differentiation to have occurred in any complex trait like intelligence. If we look at Homo sapiens and Neanderthals we see the beginnings of a genetic split about a half million years ago after at least 1 million years of separation. So that gives us a sense of how long it takes for something dramatic to happen. In other words, a very long time -- much longer than the human experience.

But again, what is your point? We don't see any human population clusters with superior hearts or spleens, so why would any population of humans have superior brains? Can you identify a single credible neurologist or neurosurgeon who can even distinguish one human brain from another ethnically or racially? No, you cannot. Are you saying that isolation caused some human groups to be smarter than others? Well that's wrong too, given the tremendous inter-population overlap in intelligence. How do you account for the fact that genius and super-genius are found in every single population cluster? How do you account for the fact that any human, regardless of race or ethnicity, can adapt and assimilate any other human culture? Just look at the United States for proof. How do you account for the fact that all "races" of humans are sexually compatible and able to produce viable offspring? You see, these are the facts and then there are your delusions. But the world is governed by facts, not delusions.

Even other "races" of animals that had been isolated from each other much longer than humans show no appreciable variations in intelligence regardless of habitat or range. Snow leopards are not more intelligent than African leopards. Siberian tigers are not more intelligent than Bengal tigers and so on. Big hint: if it didn't happen in nature, it ain't gonna happen among humans.

Humans are just one example. Just look at the geographic distribution of other native animals, even virus, such as that causing AIDS.

This is totally irrelevant to the topic. Nobody's arguing that there aren't differences between human population groups. There are even differences between your family members. However, most of the differences between human "races" are expressed in the form of superficial variation, things like skin and hair color. Moreover, well over 90% of human genetic variation occurs within "races" or local population groups rather than between them. It is unimaginably daft to suggest that a complicated trait like intelligence is going to be addressed in the tiny .01% sliver of genetic divergence between human groupings. In fact science has demonstrated that intelligence is a polygenic trait and none of those genes appear to reside within the aforementioned .01%.

Okay, I acknowledge differences. Now, what's your point? That some groups are smarter? Where's your evidence? And what about all the contradictory evidence? In fact why are you struggling so mightily? Shouldn't such racial hierarchies in intelligence be self-evident and glaringly obvious? I'm assuming you're white. Well, I'm black and I think it's pretty obvious that I'm smarter than you. Hate to break it to you.

I also alluded to the frequency distribution curve.

Distribution curves don't reflect genetics. IQ can be learned. IQ scores are not frozen in time for all eternity. IQ rises and IQ gaps close. So, again, what is your point?

There are even a few Whites who can play football and box, just as there are some articulate Black men, like our Pres.

A lot more whites would play football and box if they chose those paths. You only need to look at the history of football and boxing for confirmation. You only need to look at present day Eastern European whites for confirmation that whites, indeed, can box and box very well. You do know that there are whites outside of the United States, correct? And blacks as well. Are you cognizant of this? And any person that wants to be articulate, whether they are black or white, simply needs to make the effort and educate himself. How is articulateness or lack of same a mark of racial genetic superiority or inferiority?

Read your local newspaper. Notice any racial distribution of crime? Google Hartsville toddler death for an example!!! Dr. Jim.

Only a complete imbecile would think that crime is somehow genetically determined. If you really think that blacks are more criminally predisposed than whites then you haven't known very many whites. Many people can argue very persuasively that whites are infinitely more criminally inclined than blacks. And they can provide proof to support that argument in the form of historical crimes, mass-scale crimes in which entire continents and millions of people were destroyed. Or present day financial and white collar crimes. Or crimes against children of a deviant sexual nature, here and abroad via child sex tourism. Or mass shootings and serial killings. Oh, you mean street crime? Watch old newsreels. All the muggers, burglars, robbers and killers are white. And presently in Eastern Europe they're all white. So it's really not about genes, is it?

You want me to Google a toddler death? Are you for real? What about all the white people who've killed their toddlers? What about the white women who drowned her kids in her car and then tried to blame it on a black man? And that's just the very tip of the iceberg.

Seth90210 wrote:Notice all the white and Asian countries whose IQ averages fall below the IQ average of black Americans. Countries such as India, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Syria, Algeria, Pakistan, Morocco, etc., all score below black Americans. This wouldn't happen if your racial hierarchy in intelligence theories had any validity. As a matter of fact, adjusted for 400+ years of brutality and cultural ostracization black American IQ is actually significantly higher than white American IQ. So I don't know why you're pointing to the IQ average of blacks in America as proof of your pseudoscience. By every measure, black American IQ debunks your entire worldview.

Good point that I would like to add to! The average IQ should be affected by environment and genetics, and the international variations in IQ should reveal how strongly environment affects these averages. The more variation that is associated with environmental influences, the less accurately we can estimate the effect of any genetic differences.The image depicts roughly what I am saying. As the variation associated with environment increases, the odds ratio approaches 1:1, a 50/50 split of probability regarding which group is overall genetically superior in terms of the predisposition toward intelligence.

Apparently the genetic influences on IQ are at least as strong as the environmental influences, but this psychologytoday article's mention of genetic "multipliers" challenged my previous understanding of genetic influences (denoted by A in the twin study ACE model). If skin color is a determiner of IQ and skin color is genetic, that would be counted as a genetic influence on IQ in a twin study.

wildfunguy wrote:Apparently the genetic influences on IQ are at least as strong as the environmental influences, but this psychologytoday article's mention of genetic "multipliers" challenged my previous understanding of genetic influences (denoted by A in the twin study ACE model). If skin color is a determiner of IQ and skin color is genetic, that would be counted as a genetic influence on IQ in a twin study.

No one doubts that genetics play a vital role in intelligence. But we're all creatures of genetics, aren't we. Unless you're suggesting that some "races" have better genetics than others. If that is indeed the case then the most likely candidates for that designation would be black Africans:

European-American populations are less genetically diverse and have more potentially harmful genetic variations than African-American populations, according to an international team of researchers.

The findings suggest that human migrations may have affected genetic diversity and that a population "bottleneck" may have been involved in the original settlement of Europe

Seth90210 wrote:No one doubts that genetics play a vital role in intelligence. But we're all creatures of genetics, aren't we. Unless you're suggesting that some "races" have better genetics than others. If that is indeed the case then the most likely candidates for that designation would be black Africans:

European-American populations are less genetically diverse and have more potentially harmful genetic variations than African-American populations, according to an international team of researchers.

The findings suggest that human migrations may have affected genetic diversity and that a population "bottleneck" may have been involved in the original settlement of Europe

I wasn't suggesting that skin color directly effects intelligence. I was suggesting that because skin color, a largely genetic trait, affects how a person is treated, an environmental effect, it will be counted as a genetic influence under the ACE model even though melanin-depositing genes are only expressed as lower intelligence if the culture discriminates against people with more melanin. It is the interaction between genetics and environment that makes it so difficult to fully understand how they each contribute to who we are.Alas, suffice it to say, this is controlled for if the non-identical twins are always the same skin color too, which is usually the case since people usually select mates of roughly the same color. There could however still be a small effect on the study results.

My post before the last post was somewhat superficial. The different averages would only suggest a greater probability of overall "worse" genetics if we had no further information. In this case, however, we have the further information that African-americans have been mistreated for a long time, which would lead to a lower average IQ regardless of their true genetic potential, nullifying the reasoning above.

Seth90210 wrote:Unless you're suggesting that some "races" have better genetics than others.

Allele frequencies vary between poopulations. The question is not whether there's a difference (in genetic IQ predisposition), but how large that difference is.I think the adoption studies suggest that the difference is negligible, regardless which way it goes. The adopted black children had almost the same average, but the researchers couldn't control for differences during fetal development, and there's also the questino of statistical significance.